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Single Idea 13101

[filed under theme 9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential ]

Full Idea

A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin.

Clarification

'Ex nihilo' means out of nothing

Gist of Idea

Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin

Source

Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)

Book Ref

Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J: 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz' [CUP 1999], p.271

A Reaction

Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant).

The 12 ideas from Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J

13068 We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13069 The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13071 We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13072 Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
17080 Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13076 Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13081 Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13100 Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13102 If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13103 Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13101 Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
13104 Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]